Shweta Narayan

Full Name:

Shweta
Narayan

Born:

India

Occupation:

Nationality:

Links:

Biography

I was smelted in Pune's hot summer, quenched in the monsoon, wound up on words in Malaysia, and pointed westwards. I surfaced in Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, and Scotland before setting off to California; I'm now back in Scotland, where I lived on language, the internet, and an ever-more-restrictive diet.

I've breathed folk tales and fairy tales, not always knowing where I found them or who told them first; they're mixed into my fictional landscape, and now I fret about things like the fragile line between syncretism and appropriation.

I mostly write (when I am well enough to write) about people like myself, wherever their stories started -- the liminal folk. The ones on the boundaries, outside, half-anything. Those who fit uncomfortably. I also co-edit the online poetry zine Stone Telling, which is a home for liminal and marginalized voices.

I am triply honoured and grateful to have received the Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship for writers of color in 2007: because I got to attend Clarion '07, because I found out about the Carl Brandon Society through the scholarship, and got to join and meet the lovely people involved in it, and because I get to seek out and drool over my fellow Butler Scholars' words.

I talk more on my tumblr, though these days a lot of it is about chronic illness(es).